As part of our ongoing holiday season, I went ahead and updated my old article about the Star Wars Holiday Special from years ago and put it into the new site template so you guys can finally comment it on here! After all, who wouldn't want to talk about things like "Life Day" and that insanely creepy grandpa Wookie?

I loved that Hasbro released a Holiday Special version of Boba Fett a couple years ago. It wasn't just a straight up repaint either, they gave him the blaster pistol and vibro rod thing that he had in the cartoon. Sometimes when I'm alone I like to tape him to my back and pretend I'm a happy flipper monster that eats spaceships.

This special was so bad it became an experience. I made a friend watch it with me when I got my copy, because for something this bad, one must not experience it alone.

And yes, Bea Arthur was probably the only real entertaining part of this special (no disrespect to Harvey Korman, but after Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety, History of the World: Part 1, and The Carol Burnett Show, I expect better from him, and you could tell he had little to work with and did even less with it)

EDIT: Side note, every copy of this I have ever seen has all these cool commercials from the 70s, and it doesn't take long till you look forward to these old commercials :P

i remember this when it first ran....as a child, this was the best thing ever...there were no vhs tapes, so the only way you could watch Star Wars id if it was re-released in theaters! and this was before Empire Strikes back. so for all the cheese it is NOW, back then it was great! sure its horrid and painful now, but jeeesuhs, what WASNT in the late 70's??

Horrible, but it just goes to show you how young television still was at that point. Could you possibly imagine, say, an episode of "Dexter" thrown together with test scenes, totally random clips inserted, a digital still of Michael Hall spouting a catchphrase, then 15 minutes of looping murder scenes??

Lucas tossed this abortion on primetime TV, and they just went "Uh, what?" and moved along. WOW.

And old commercials were just awesome, especially from the 70's. Very strange, but appealing.

Ah the Star Wars Holiday Special was one of the first articles that my husband and I read on I-Mockery. Not long after reading this we went and hunted down a copy of this travesty to see for ourselves. How bad could it be we thought, what could go wrong, its just a movie. By the time we got to grandpa Itchy and his space porn my eyes hurt, as if they wished to rip themselves out of my head and slap me for making them watch something so vile. I couldn't go on after that, my husband tried but he didn't get much farther. We haven't spoken of it since and I'm glad. I'll read about how bad it is all day, but I just can't watch it again. I...I just can't.

Also, am I the only one who hoped that Darth Vader would come in and choke Lumpy or throw him out of the tree house? I hope I'm not.

Actuly Lucas really had nothing to do with this, he was only 1 of 6(!) writers. He also didn't really see anything until the end result and he was disappointed as I quote:

"George Lucas himself has rarely commented on or even acknowledged its existence, except to friends and co-workers. He is thought to hold a low opinion of it. For instance, Tom Burman, one of the costume designers for the holiday special, has said that Lucas once told him that he was very disappointed with the final product."

However this made me laugh:

"At one Australian fan convention he reportedly said "If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every copy of that show and smash it." In an online chat with fans, he reportedly said: "The holiday special does not represent my vision for Star Wars." In an interview with Maxim magazine in May 2002, Maxim asked the question, "Any plans for a Special Edition of the Holiday Special?" Lucas responded with "Right. That's one of those things that happened, and I just have to live with it."

I hear you George (*cough* Re-release of the origonal trilogy with added content anyone)

I think I comment on this every year you post it. I just remember my brother like spending a ton of damn money for this "novelty" star wars item that is really hard to get a copy of on vhs. Then he pretty much forced me to watch this crap. I just remember at the end of it saying to him, " this is the dumbest film I think I've seen since the movie Tale of a Vampire with Julian Sands..." It either really hurt his feelings, or he realized that being a star wars nerd is pretty dumb to constantly obsess a movie that is like 20+ years old. After that my brother decided Star Wars was no longer cool. Glad I stopped his obsession. Anyone else need a star wars bitch slap, just hit up ol Johnny Luchador.

I don't get why they couldn't do a real scene with Darth Vader. I mean, no offense to David Prowse, but all you really need to film such a scene is a Vader costume and James Earl Jones to provide the voice.

They had Jones, and that should have been the expensive part, right? I mean, didn't they have any Vader costumes lying around? They had access to the C-3PO and Chewbacca outfits, and even made a few new costumes. It wouldn't be the "proper" Vader without Prowse, but do you really think they would care for a special like this?

The video quality is bad because TSWHS has been bootlegged to hell and back spanning an entire generation of recordable media. Copies of copies and such. It also doesn't help that the source material is a 70's TV show, probably even Criterion couldn't fix something like that.
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Battlechess was actually a Commodore Amiga game that was ported to the 3DO, this 3DO version was then ported to PC.